June 29, 2001
Belgian Magistrate Launches Probe Against Saddam
By Bart Crols

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian magistrate has launched an investigation against Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity.

``It concerns the attacks against the Kurds after the end of the Gulf War (news - web sites)
(in 1991),'' Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office, said
on Friday.

Saddam is the latest in a series of high-profile public figures to become a target of
complaints filed in Belgium under a 1993 law, which allows Belgian courts to prosecute
foreign officials for human rights violations committed outside Belgium.

Six unidentified people filed the complaint against Saddam.

The complaint has been found to be admissible, Pellens said, adding that Brussels examining
magistrate Damien Vandermeersch is handling the investigation.

Four of the six people filing the complaint live in Belgium and a fifth  in the Netherlands,
Pellens added. She could not say where the sixth person lived.

Pellens said the Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office did not have the resources to handle a
recent wave of similar complaints under the 1993 law, which would involve sending teams
of investigators to the countries in question.

Two weeks ago, survivors of the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees during Israel's
1982 invasion of Lebanon filed a case in Brussels accusing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon (news - web sites) of crimes against humanity under the same 1993 law.

And on Thursday, an Ivorian national in Belgium started legal proceedings in Brussels
against Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, Defense Minister Moise Lida Kouassi and
others, also for crimes against humanity.

The pace of complaints filed under the law has picked up since the high-profile trial of four
Rwandans, including two nuns, which ended in Belgium earlier this month.

The four were sentenced to between 12 and 20 years in prison for their part in the 1994
Rwandan genocide in which up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred.
At least three have filed appeals for a retrial.

Belgian prosecutors have previously tried to make former Chilean President Augusto
Pinochet (news - web sites) and former Democratic Republic of Congo (news - web sites)
Foreign Minister Yerodia Abdoulaye Ndombasi face justice under the same law.
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